Analysis of cell proliferation in Drosophila wing imaginal discs using mosaic clones.

Experimental data on spatial and temporal distributions of mosaic clones in Drosophila wing imaginal disc were analyzed. Long-lived proliferation centers (PR1, PR2, and PR3) and areas with decreased proliferation activity were found in the notum region of the disc. Simulation of the growth kinetics of mosaic patches demonstrated that the cell cycle in proliferation centers PR2 and PR3 was shorter than the average cycle in the disc and in the center PR1. A nonrandom clustering of rapidly dividing cells was observed in the PR2, but not in the other cases. The reason why the cell-cycle duration and the clustering of dividing cells may not coincide is discussed in terms of the recruitment of nondividing cells into the cell cycle. The simulation of the time course of the first and second moments of the size distribution of mosaic clones allowed the variance of cell-cycle progression rates to be determined and demonstrated that a model with a continuous cell-cycle rates gave a better fit to the data than the transition probability model of Smith and Martin.